The clue to these inscriptions Europeans do not
possess, because, as I have already stated, it is guarded in MSS.
which are as old as the inscriptions and which are almost out of
reach. Even in case our hopes are realized and we obtain this clue,
a new difficulty will arise before us. We shall have to begin a
systematic refutation, page by page, of many a volume of hypotheses
published by the Royal Asiatic Society. A work like this might be
accomplished by dozens of tireless, never-resting Sanskritists--a
class which, even in India, is almost as rare as white elephants.
Thanks to private contributions and the zeal of some educated Hindu
patriots, two free classes of Sanskrit and Pali had already been
opened--one in Bombay by the Theosophical Society, the other in
Benares under the presidency of the learned Rama-Misra-Shastri.
In the present year, 1882, the Theosophical Society has, altogether,
fourteen schools in Ceylon and India.
Our heads full of thoughts and plans of this kind, we, that is to
say, one American, three Europeans, and three natives, occupied a
whole carriage of the Great Indian Peninsular Railroad on our way
to Nassik, one of the oldest towns in India, as I have already
mentioned, and the most sacred of all in the eyes of the inhabitants
of the Western Presidency. Nassik borrowed its name from the
Sanskrit word "Nasika," which means nose. An epic legend assures
us that on this very spot Lakshman, the eldest brother of the
deified King Rama, cut off the nose of the giantess Sarpnaka,
sister of Ravana, who stole Sita, the "Helen of Troy" of the Hindus.
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